The Apostle's Prayer, No. 1 - PH15-01

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 1:9-11

In verse 9, we have a petition for expanding affection, that their love should develop. That's petition number one: "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment." The words "And this" in the Greek are the two little words "kai touto." This combination of words is a specific calling of our attention to the fact that an important statement is going to be delivered as a signal. He's about to reveal the content of the important things for which he prays for the Philippian Christians.

Therefore, he says, "I pray," and the word "pray" is "proseuchomai." This is the word which is used only for prayer to God. It is not used of petitions that are made to men. Therefore, what Paul is saying here is that he is praying with a definite consciousness of speaking to God who is out there listening. He's not just talking to empty air. Paul, because he was a prayer warrior, understood the fantastic accomplishments that are brought about as the result of prayer. This is in the present tense, so it's his constant attitude to be praying for them. It is active which means he chooses to do it. Also, it is indicative. It is a statement of fact. Then he uses the word "that" which in the Greek is "hina." That little word means "purpose." It's a conjunction expressing purpose. Paul is giving us the substance of his prayers--the reason that he is constantly approaching God in behalf of these Christians.

His petition number one is for their love. This is the Greek word "agape". "Agape," I think you now know, is a mental attitude type of love. It can be expressed toward God; it can be expressed toward your opposite number--your husband or wife; and, it can be expressed toward your friends. It is simply a mind which is free of ill will and bitterness, and a mind which is committed to goodwill. It's in contrast to another type of love that we have looked at in the Bible which is an emotional type of love. This is that "philos" love. "Philos" love is a compatibility or a rapport relationship, and it comes from all of the facets of your soul. You have a compatibility with another person's mind, with your mind; with their emotions, your emotions; and, with their will, your will. This "philos" love, if it's divine love, flows from the filling of the Holy Spirit and the application of doctrine which we have learned.

Love

Therefore, there is a great deal of talk in concept about love, and it just permeates our society. There are some fantastic results of the working of human love, when it comes to our government, for example. These sometimes seem to slip past us when we don't associate love with anything more than just, "I like you. You like me. It's fun to be together." It goes much deeper than that.

Love is both a mental attitude and an emotional expression. As such, in both of these types, it belongs originally to God. In its mental aspect, God is the source of "agape" love. We have that in John 3:16. Also, God is the source of "philos" love which has an emotional quality. This word is used in John 16:27 in describing God's love toward us. Therefore, this is a divine expression of "agape" and "philos" love. Please remember that you can humanly express the same thing. "Agape" love doesn't mean that it just comes from God. Even an unbeliever can be in a position where he does not carry a mental bitterness toward certain individuals or toward certain situations. He can have what is generally called "positive thinking." When the unbeliever speaks about this, he talks about "positive thinking." What does he mean? He means no mental hangups. That's what he's talking about. However, this is human love, so this mental attitude can be achieved by unbelievers, but it is not God's love. God's love does not depend on our character or our conduct. So He loves us all the time, in the maximum amount.

There is one very important thing that you should remember about love, and that is that genuine divine love is not something you were born with. You are not born with love. Love does not naturally flow out of you. I don't care how many times they looked at you as a squealing scrunchie little infant and they said, "How loving he is." You weren't. You didn't know the first thing about it. All you wanted was to be out of the night air where it was someplace warm; you wanted something in your stomach; and, you wanted to be kept dry. That's how loving you were. It was all self-centered. Love is something that has to be developed. You are not born with it, and some people never get very far with it.

Human love is what Satan comes along and substitutes for the real thing. It's a pseudo love. This is what the world is all hung up on. This is what the world thinks the world needs. When it says, "What the world needs is love," it's talking about this human "agape" and "philos" relationship. It is not speaking about any divine quality whatsoever. Therefore, this human love is glamorized in movies and on TV. It's expressed as do-goodism, and it is practiced as sensuality ("eros"), and marriages which are built upon this human love are the marriages that feed the divorce courts. Marriages such as that are made in hell, not in heaven. They are the marriages that are confused because they are structured on human "agape" and "philos" love.

Divine love in a Christian is the real thing. Where does it come from? It comes: one, from the filling of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5); and, secondly, it comes from the fact that you have grown in spiritual maturity and have erected a spiritual maturity structure in your soul (1 John 2:5). One of the facets of that spiritual maturity is capacity to love God; to love your mate; and, to love your friends. This capacity for real love is obviously, therefore, the result of learning Bible doctrine. This is how you develop what you were not born with. You develop the capacity of divine love as you learn the principles of the Word of God. That gives you the capacity to love. You have to learn, first of all, the gospel. You have to believe it. Then you have to learn 1 John 1:9. You have to know how to confess your sins biblically so that you can be a spiritual Christian to be filled with the Spirit. That is the next essential for you to be able to enter into love. Then you can learn all the principles of the Word of God with which you build up spiritual maturity.

You cannot build spiritual maturity without doctrine. Doctrine constitutes the building blocks. That's the content. Therefore if you as a believer sit in some situation where Sunday after Sunday goes by, and you are never introduced to the principles of the Word of God, you have a very bad problem. You will never go on to spiritual maturity, and you will never enter into divine love. God has given us the system for learning His word. We call it the grace system of perception. It enables us, apart from human IQ, to be able to enter into a learning of the Word of God, and therefore to develop these capacities for love.

Therefore, what the world praises is certainly not what God offers. Actually, in your old sin nature there is a strong side. Our old sin natures do not only produce what is bad, but it produces this thing that is human good, and that's where this human love comes from. Out of the strong side of your old sin nature pours forth one of the things that God condemns, and that's human love. It comes from that old sin nature in both its "agape" and "philos" forms.

Therefore, the unbeliever, from his old sin nature, can have a mind that is free of ill will--"agape" love. We have this in John 3:19. Here we have the unbeliever being described as having an attitude of goodwill toward darkness. He is free of bitterness or darkness. He has "agape" love for darkness. An unbeliever can also have any emotional attachments of the "philos" kind. We have that in John 15:19. Love, therefore is an attitude of the mind first. It is not overt. It is not some kind of sentimentality. It is, first of all, a quality of the mind, and if it's divine, it's a quality which God only can create through His Word in us.

Love in Our Society

Capital Punishment

Now that's the kind of madness that has come as a result of this human love. Why don't we have capital punishment? Why did our Supreme Court say that God was wrong in what he told Noah that he was henceforth to do?" God told Noah that if an animal killed a human being, that animal was to be destroyed. Anybody who was guilty of murder one, God said, is to be destroyed. The Supreme Court said, "That's cruel and unusual punishment." Those are the words. In other words, that is not love to put a person to death just because he's gouged out the eyes of your four-year-old son; cut him up in pieces; and, kept one of his fingers for a toy. It's not loving to execute somebody like that. Get hold of what human love is, and start projecting it to where you live. The problems we have with fear on our streets stem from this distorted concept of what love is all about, that everybody is mouthing so much about.

National Aggression

What happened in Korea? The aggressors came pouring across from North Korea. South Korea was unprepared. It wasn't anticipating that kind of an aggressive attack. The United Nations declared North Korea an aggressor, and the only reason they could do it was because Russia had gotten mad at the Security Council a day or two before and had walked out, and so Russia wasn't there to veto the resolution. As a result, American troops poured into the peninsula. Our Seventh Army was at the peak of its fighting abilities. It performed a holding action all the way down the peninsula. So the Marines poured in and the army poured in, and they started moving up. They started pushing the North Koreans back. Then General MacArthur came up with that brilliant Inchon landing where the Marines stormed ashore behind the lines of the North Koreans. In short order we were right up to the Yalu River sitting there looking across into China. All of Korea had been liberated. The North Koreans, in their aggression, lost out.

Then what happened? China, following communist principles, which are that we never allow what communism has ever taken ever to be lost again, poured troops across the Yalu finally. General MacArthur said, "This is a new war." He called for a new set of directives, and a new fighting front. This meant that now we have a new aggressor. We now deal with the new aggressor as we did the old aggressor. When he hits us, we barge right in and we take his territory. We had taken the North Koreans' land, so they could no longer fight. We broke the back of their base of operations, but we had a president in Harry Truman who decided that he was so scared of Russia that he was not going to dare call the Chinese to task. We could have easily called them to task at that point.

So, what did we do? We put our tails between our legs, and we retreated right back down the peninsula until we came to the original dividing line between free South Korea and slave North Korea. When we got to the line, we stiffened and stopped, and the Chinese couldn't push us one more inch. This showed that we deliberately moved to that point. We could have also made our stand at the Yalu River, and we could have cut them into little pieces right then as they came across, and fertilized the countryside the way they like to fertilize the countryside in China--with dead human bodies. I've been there, and I've smelled it.

It's unfortunate that because we considered it loving, that we should not fight and that we should not stop the aggressor. The communist world learned something very important about Americans. For the first time in American history, Americans were willing to shed blood for no purpose at all. When the communists learned that in North Korea, they had us over a barrel. They then did the same thing to us in Vietnam, and what have we accomplished? We temporarily restrained them from taking over South Vietnam. Kissinger's so-called peace treaty went into effect, and 50,000 more South Vietnamese died. That's how peaceful it was over there. The North Vietnamese got ready for a new push and attack. They consistently rebuilt the American airfields. They were allowed to stay. Imagine a peace treaty where you allow the enemy's army to stay in your country. Why? Well, it's loving. It would be terribly unloving to tell those guys, "Get yourselves out of this country or we're going to send you home in boxes, one or the other." That's terribly unloving, isn't it?

Therefore, there were thousands more North Vietnamese in South Vietnam then than when the Americans were there. Just remember that 58,000 Americans died because of what one of our presidents revealed to the communists in the Korean campaign: "We'll shed blood and still let you have your way. In other words, you can exercise your aggression, and we won't take your country."

What did we tell our friend Israel to do? The same thing. The love in our state department pursued this same human viewpoint course. In a press conference, the leader of Israel was asked about those pre-1967 borders. They were restricted with borders which were militarily untenable. The only way they kept from being slaughtered when the Arabs decided to attack them is that they instituted a preemptive attack. The Israelites were dirty enough to start the war an hour before it was scheduled to begin. Consequently, before 24 hours was over, they had the Arabs' head in a meat grinder, and they had a hold of the handle. And they cranked it away like crazy. In 6 days, they had all the fertilizer they needed to make Israel blossom like a rose.

However, what happened then? The Jews surrounded that Arab army; pushed them up against the canal; and, they were ready to move in and destroy the force that enabled the Arabs to attack them and to threaten them. When the Jews surrounded that Arab army against the Suez Canal, Russia realized that her pawn was again going to be stomped right back out of existence as they were in 1967 and they sent a note that all of our officials, including the president, described as being really rough. What that note said was, "Don't let the Jews eliminate the Arab army which they have trapped against the canal." The United States turned to Israel and said, "You can't kill them. They can kill you. We want them to go home. Russia has already resupplied them. When they get rested up again. They'll come back and fight again. You can try then." They forced Israel to stop its operation.

Israel's leaders were asked, "Should you have retained the new territory you gained in 1967 that made the Arabs so mad?" The Israelis had the wisdom to point out, "If it wasn't for that new territory and those new positions we were able to establish, we would not have been able to hold out." This time the Jews were worried about public opinion. Therefore, they wanted world opinion to say, "No, you Jews didn't start the fight this time."

So they stayed and they waited, knowing what the Arabs were going to do until the Arabs hit them. Now it was very costly. Just remember that in ten days of fighting, the Jews lost an amount of men which would be equal to 147,000 dead Americans compared to our population. How would you feel if 147,000 Americans were announced dead in ten days--in that short span of time in battle--knowing that most of those men are dead because we let the enemy hit us first while we sat there and watched him and knew what he was getting ready to do? What the reporters were implying was, "Israel, you should have been loving enough to give that territory back again."

That's the kind of insanity that exists on a national front. People are saying, "Oh, if we don't let the aggressor go scot-free, we'll have another world war." Do you think Russia is eager for a world war over a bunch of Arabs out in the desert? Do you think Russia is ready for us to burn her to a crisp with our atomic capacity? This is disorientation of thinking, and you can't do a thing about it. You are the salt of the earth as believers with some doctrinal insight. However, there are others who are guiding your nation, and you're hung in there. Therefore, we are in the pattern of giving it all back.

The Energy Crisis

For example, there is a law called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act. It's an example of what we're talking about. This agency of the government has unlimited power over any business that has one or more employees. The small businessmen are scared to death of this administration. They can't do much about it. The only reason this organization--this bureau of our government--is restrained is because Congress hasn't given it unlimited funds. There's absolutely nothing that they cannot do to an employer if they decide that he's out of line in some way. If they had the money, so they could really cover the ground, it would be frightful. That's deliberate because, naturally, the left wing liberals who are planning a socialist world for us, don't want to move too fast and get you up in arms so you'll start writing your congressman and say, "Get that law off the books."

The big businesses are also afraid, but they're able to cope with it a little more. We have had a monstrous invasion of private business and of the industrial productivity of this nation by such time-bombs as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and you're going to be hearing more about this. When manufacturers now receive advance notices on products that are manufactured for sale in businesses, they now look for the little phrase in the advertising literature "OSHA-Approved" because the manufacturers are leery of buying anything that the government has not approved under the controls that it has under this law. All you need is one employee and OSHA can walk in and take a look at your facilities and how you're running things, and declare that you are out of line with their monstrous book of regulations. They have seven pages on aluminum ladders alone. If you miss, they can fine you.

A businessmen in the west was fined $275 for some violation of which he was accused. He didn't feel it was a just and fair accusation of a violation, but he paid the fine because he didn't want to take the trouble of trying to go through all the legal process. However, he did write his congressman, and the congressman took up the issue with the OSHA agents in Washington. What happened? The businessman out west found that half-a-dozen OSHA agents suddenly descended on his business one day. Before they were through, they had slapped $36,000 worth of fines against him. Therefore, he had discovered how it is when you step on Big Brother's toes. That big government also has a big mouth with which to bite.

The goal is simply to discredit business in the eyes of the public in order to impose a socialist state. In the name of love for the consumer (for the common man), activists lawyers have been systematically attacking the very goose (the free enterprise system) which is laying the golden eggs for us. They tell us that the idea is not to establish a communist setup. I've had this regularly reported to me by our college students. Their college professors sneer at you if you say the word "communism." They say, "Well, of course we agree with you. We don't want communism." They act like you're some kind of a knucklehead and that you're not with it, if you use the word "communism." That's a little confusing. They're interested in socialism. Well, there's no difference. Socialism is just a step to communism. They both have to be handled in the same brutal bloody way in order to bring it about.

However, the idea that these activists are after is to create something such as Hitler had in Nazi Germany. Hitler was a rabid anti-communist, but what Hitler established was private corporations, but the managers of those corporations were members of the government, so that the government was in effect controlling the big business of Nazi Germany. The result was that 25 million people died in the entirety of World War II before they broke the back of this kind of control. That is Satan's fantastic device that he is seeking to impose upon this country in order to destroy personal freedom and personal liberty.

Ralph Nader recently declared publicly, when he was asked, "What do you think we need in our American system?" He said, "We need some system of socialism or communism." Why? Because he loves you. He loves you so much. He wants all these good things to be made readily available to you. So, systematically business is being discredited in order to be controlled from above by the government.

Here we had the example of the energy crisis. Energy is the lifeblood of an industrialized nation such as the United States. Without energy, all of the rest of the God given resources and blessings we have are absolutely useless. Energy is the key. Therefore, our socialist liberal oriented planners again looked at this and said, "We love the people. Our love and welfare that we are seeking for the people requires controls of our government so that the people can benefit. The American industrial free enterprise system is so magnificent that the people will never give us those controls. Therefore we are going to have to show the people that the government is collapsing, and that our system of free enterprise is eating itself up. It is self-destructing, and the government must come in with planners to make things good for the people. So energy was the prime target, and the oil companies, in the name of love, became the objects of this attack.

Remember that we in the United States have 6% of the world population. Do you know how much of the energy we use that's produced? We use 34%. We run off with a third of the world's energy that's produced while we have 6% of the population. This reflects the high standard of living we have, and the advanced industrialization of this nation.

However, do you know that the experts and the scientists tell us that we have enough energy fuel in this nation to last us 1,000 years? You're trying to figure out why the price of gasoline keeps going up while the price of crude oil goes down, aren't you? We've got enough energy for 1,000 years in our own country. The U.S. Geological Survey has declared that we have enough petroleum for 500 years. We have it all over our continental shelf off the Gulf Coast. We have it all over the east coast where we haven't even started digging. We have it way up in Alaska. We have 300 years of natural gas. We have 1,500 years of coal. On our federal lands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, we have been told recently that we have enough high grade oil in shale rock which is 6 times greater than all the proven oil reserves on earth. It's right here in this nation, right out there in three western states. Yet, human love, in the form of social welfare, has been systematically deteriorating the free enterprise system, and has created this threat for the nation for you as a citizen.

One of our senators instituted a bill in Congress some years ago called the National Environmental Policy Act. He instituted the bill, and it sat in committee and nobody would touch it. Then suddenly a Union Oil Company well blew in Santa Barbara Channel. Oil spilled into the channel; covered birds; and, messed up the beaches. That bill came screaming out of committee right through Congress. Why? Because of human love, in order to do something good to protect you the people. The news media were screaming and you might remember the pictures of this old pelican all drenched in oil sitting there looking sad and droopy. The news media were saying that hundreds of thousands of birds had been killed. There was just frenzied and mounting every night until the poor Americans said, "Those dirty no-good oil companies! Look what they're doing to me. Oh, Ralph Nader, how nice of you to love me. Oh, senators, please do something for us."

Well, later, surveys showed that about 600 birds were involved in getting oil-soaked, and they don't have any evidence to show that very many of them died from it. They just had to go and get a new set of feathers. There was no significant permanent damage to the Santa Barbara Channel. It was all cleaned up. There were little long-range environmental destructive effects from it. However, they shut the wells down like crazy, and they imposed restrictions so that the oil companies quit digging. You have to dig eight dry holes to get one real well. It's very expensive to drill a well. So, the oil companies have been put under such restriction. We must wonder if this was not deliberate and systematic, all in the name of love and our well-being that has caused this condition.

Well, one of the clauses in the Senate bill sent the socialist left-wingers into a spasm of ecstasy. This was because they discovered that here was a clause that declared that the government would require a filing of an environmental impact statement before allowing any business to take any action that might affect the environment. This was particularly directed at the Interior Department. Before the Interior Department could say, "You can lay an oil pipe across government land," they had to get this vast explanation of what this would do to the environment.

When they got hold of this, they zeroed in, first of all, on the Alaska field. They killed the Alaska field immediately with this clause because they brought suit in a federal court, and the court said, "Stop." I was in Alaska at the time, and I visited Valdez. That's the Southern terminal end of the oil pipeline. Acres and acres of pipe were stacked up there. The people with me, as they took me around, said, "All of these pipes are supposed to carry the oil from the North Slope. These pipes are in varying degrees of thicknesses. They have all been designed for absolutely every foot upon which they're going to lie on the tundra. They have been designed with every environmental feature taken into account. The oil companies did this." Yet, there the pipes set, untouched and unreleased because a senator got a bill passed in a frenzy of controlling our environment out of love for the people and their welfare.

Do you know what that same senator said then? The loving senator said "I think it's outrageous. We can't import oil from Alaska." He thinks it's outrageous. He's the guy who brought the bill with the clause in it to stop the Alaska pipeline. People who love you caused years of delay in the Alaska pipeline.

At that time, we ordered 5,000 cassette tapes for our tape ministry. We weren't been able to get them. Tapes are made from petroleum products. We sat and waited. Finally, our supplier got 9,000 tapes in, so they were kind enough to give us 400. That's all we got of 5,000 tapes. The crew quickly cranked out those 400 tapes. They were gone. Here was the Word of God that people were asking for. We received letters from inmates in the Cook County Jail who were getting on tapes. They were studying the Word of God, and we couldn't supply them. Why? Because we've been taken care of by people with their human love within our society.

What I'm trying to do is to show you why the apostle Paul prayed that this "agape" love would possess Christians. That was a fantastic prayer request. If you don't have this, you're going to be a dodo bird. Without this, you will have no insights to understand what this "what the world needs is love" bit is all about. It has caused you major crises because people love you so much.

The Great Depression of the early 1930s was a time when all the do-gooders and all the human lovers had their chance under the government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to institute the socialistic concepts that have crept into our society and which have brought about the destructive effects of the free enterprise system such as through the Environmental Protection Agency. Senator bills killed off nuclear power plants; they killed off the digging of wells out in the Gulf; and, they killed off the exploration for new fields. The people who are in the oil business that told us that if they would just free the companies to go looking and enable the free enterprise system to work with adequate profits, that they would very quickly come up with all the oil this nation needs.

What is behind this? The human love that permeates your government. Well, you might say, "What we need to do is act like some people have got some divine viewpoint concepts. Let's get some men up there who can sound off and who can make the people up there see what they really are, and what their thinking is, if that's possible. The problem is that people who know wouldn't get elected. Our society is so backward in its concepts and in its outlooks now that it thinks that that love is a great and wonderful thing. It thinks that Ralph Nader is a knight in shining armor who is doing us a very great and wonderful service. Therefore, the loving concern of the ecology lobby; government agencies; liberal members of Congress; and, the news media have helped to prepare and to bring about these crises. Therefore, we're threatened with national impotency and economic depression of a frightening magnitude. However, I want you to remember, so you don't feel too bad, that it's all done in love. That's what's so gross about the human love that we're talking about. There's nothing so ridiculous.

Christians

Therefore, what do you do? You go for the pseudo stuff. You'll hook right into what Satan is cranking out in this world, which has caused the kind of thing we have in law and order breakdown; the coddling of the criminals; the acceptance of his brutality; what's happening on the scene of national aggressors; what's happening within our own government itself relative to energy and "climate change; and, everything down the line which is the subtle moving of this nation from free enterprise and the liberties that it brings to the socialism and the brutalities that it brings. This is because we are in love. It's pathetic that Christians should be the ones who should be guilty above all others of falling into that trap.

So when Paul says here that he is praying that their love may abound concerning this divine mental attitude type love, he is asking for a very important marvelous fantastic petition which we need today far more than the Philippians needed it in their day within the sophisticated culture in which they lived. With this type of divine love, you can enter the "philos" expression of emotion, and it'll be controlled by God's thinking. It'll be the right kind of feelings. However, you've got to have "agape" love first. That's the general condition of mind before you can extend it to an individual. This is a petition of monumental importance. It all begins with "agape" love toward God. Then it flows back toward man. It begins with love toward God in the "agape" sense which He Himself presents in this. Then it flows back from God through us out to people. Then we are not led into the kind of insanity of a love which violates the principles of establishment for nations that God has ordained, and the goals and the priorities which God has ordained in His Word for believers.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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